Published 4:00 am, Friday, April 4, 2003

2003-04-04 04:00:00 PDT Baghdad -- A power blackout plunged Baghdad into darkness, and the thunderous roar of heavy artillery fire filled the air Thursday night as Saddam Hussein's regime braced itself for a desperate struggle for survival.

Near dusk, the working-class Zubaida suburb on the capital's southwestern outskirts was suddenly shaken by the deafening sound of an outgoing artillery barrage. On a nondescript industrial block, frightened drivers frantically made U-turns to flee from U.S. missile retaliation that was expected to follow.

Within minutes, all of southern Baghdad was convulsed by wave after wave of deep, rolling weapons fire. Between each wave could be heard the high drone of U.S. planes and the peals of bomb and missile strikes.

Soon afterward, the entire city was blacked out. Whether by the Iraqis or by U.S. strikes, it was impossible to tell.

It was the first widespread power outage to hit Baghdad since the war began,

and it cast an ominous pall over the capital. In the 1991 Gulf War, when the city suffered through 43 days of air strikes, residents went without power for weeks, and water and sewage service was cut off for even longer.

Iraqi officials insisted, meanwhile, that the Americans were nowhere near Baghdad and reacted testily to news that U.S. forces had drawn to within 15 miles of the city and were bearing down on the international airport.

Information Minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf called the reports "dirty lies and propaganda," saying, "The Americans are nowhere. They are in the desert only, they are moving constantly, they control nothing."

In mid-afternoon, the Information Ministry took some foreign journalists to the airport, about 12 miles outside the city to the southwest, to prove the government's contention that it still controlled that piece of real estate. Sure enough, reporters found a deserted airport with a few nervous Iraqi soldiers and no Americans in sight.

But soon after the Baghdad-based reporters left, the U.S. Army's 3rd Infantry Division rolled into the airport, a stunning indictment of the Iraqis' impaired intelligence-gathering capabilities.

REPORTS OF HIGHWAYS CLOGGED

As U.S. forces converged on Baghdad after plowing through a gantlet of Iraqi fighters, there were reports that a tide of people were fleeing the city,

and some U.S. units were forced to temporarily halt their advances as highways became clogged.

The thunderous artillery barrage, which shook the capital for about two hours, was followed by silence. In the pitch-black night, only a few car headlights illuminated the streets, and the sole sound was the low hum of scattered power generators.

Then, after midnight, the familiar thuds of U.S. missile strikes began again in the distance. It was unclear what they were hitting. The nightly attacks have destroyed many government palaces and offices, along with communications centers and bases of the army and security services.

In the past two weeks, Baghdad's citizens have become knowledgeable in the sounds of the urban battlefield: the rat-a-tat of anti-aircraft fire, the dull,

loud whock of outgoing surface-to-air missiles, and the earth-shaking impacts of U.S. bombs and missiles crashing into targets. But Thursday's low roar unmistakably spelled heavy artillery.

For hundreds of thousands of Iraqi war veterans, it is a nightmarish sound. A large proportion of the 500,000 Iraqis and 1 million Iranians killed in the deserts during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war died in artillery exchanges.

"I remember that sound all too well, and I hoped and prayed I would never hear it again," said Abdulrahman Said, a downtown bakery store owner.

"I am not scared of it, no," he said as the first thunder rolled through his crowded store. He paused a long while and shuddered slightly. "But I have seen too much death it caused."

The foreboding that seemed everywhere Thursday was accentuated by Baghdad's deteriorating air conditions.

TEMPERATURES SOAR

After weeks of breezy, unusually cool weather, temperatures soared to the mid-80s Thursday and the winds stopped. A creeping sense of asphyxiation set in, as smoke from the hundreds of oil fires set by the regime to obscure U.S. pilots' views was no longer swept away, coiling instead into a foul, stinking smog that seared lungs and irritated eyes.

Noticeably absent in the Thursday night air was the amplified wail of Muslim holy prayers. Since the U.S. attacks began, all missile and bomb strikes have been immediately followed by prayers blasted at high volume from the minarets of Baghdad's mosques -- in keeping with an edict from the government's Ministry of Religious Affairs, which has tried to convince Iraqis that resistance to the Americans is a Muslim duty.

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On the streets and in their homes, many Baghdad residents say the lilting, sad sing-song of Allahu akhbar -- God is great -- also has been a soothing spiritual consolation.

Thursday night, the minarets' loudspeakers fell silent. There were no prayers, only darkness and silence, stink and fear.

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